Up at 6.30 on a Saturday – must be a race day! Nigel and Mary picked me up at 7.15 in the van, we picked up the boats from the club and headed to Milton KeynesWe nearly remembered all the heads,, tails etc. Nigel had very thoughtfully taped all the speakers and wiring to the boat in advance but had unfortunately forgotten the headset – back to shouting at us! Dave did some running repairs to the tail and we unloaded the boats and set up camp.Got ready for the first race – welcomed Tanya to her first BDA event. Helen nearly fell in after tripping over a rope – possibly she was reflecting on that stolen cup of coffee earlier (I think she was led astray by our team captain) We were up against Raging Dragons and a charity crew, Anchordemics, which we won in a time of 50.60, but Malcolm wasn’t happy. Raging were coming back at us at the end – could do better.On to the semis – against Tao, Secklow and Wokingham. We came second in a time of 49.63 to Tao, but a much better race.Then the minor final against Secklow, Worcester and Raging – we came in 4th in a time of 50.63 – we were all really disappointed. However, we put that behind us and moved on to the 500s.

We all thought it was lunch break next and started on the picnics – but no – the BDA decided to hold the first round of the 500s before the AGM, so we all swallowed down whatever we had been eating and loaded up the boat for the first round of the 500 metres. We were hemmed in by the Amathus boat and had a lot of difficulty extricating ourselves (was that a yellow dragon’s head?) and were late to the start. We had to turn round straight away, then off. We were against Worcester, Notts Anaconda and Anchordemics. We were 2nd to Worcester in a time of 2.07.59. This put us into the reps against Wokingham and Notts. Brian appeared in some very fetching sunglasses modelled on Biggles – nice one Brian. We won in a time of 2.04.79On to the cup semi against Worcester, Notts and Excalibre. This was a really good close race – we came third in a time of 2.04.41, which put us into the Minor Final.The final was against Kingston, Secklow and Raging. We came a good second to Kingston – we were with them all the way down the course, and our time was 2.02.94.Malcolm was very happy – we came 6th overall out of 21 teams, picked up 11 points and our times had improved with each race in the 500s.Time to get the boats off the water, pack up and have a celebratory drink before heading home.